We are concerned about protecting your privacy.  This document sets out how the site handles membership information, email addresses, searches, links to other sites and cookies.

Levels of confidentiality of ALMA membership
Members can nominate their preferred level of confidentiality. The three levels are:

Level 1:  
Details can be available only to the ALMA committee and shall be used only so that ALMA can forward information
 
Level 2:  
Details can be made available to all members of ALMA but not to any non-members
 
Level 3:  
Details can be made available to anyone at the discretion of the committee
 
Members nominating level 2 or 3 will be placed on a mailing list, which is available to ALMA members. Members nominating level 3, may be placed on referral lists and other generally public lists.

Membership and electronic mail addresses
To become a member of this site, we ask for your email address, your full name, a login account name and a password.

We don't give specific information about members to anyone under any circumstances, unless we are required to do so for legal reasons. We do not show your email address on the site. Your full name is used instead wherever it is appropriate to credit authorship.

We will only record your email address if you send us a message or supply it as part of your user registration. It will only be used for the purpose for which you provide it, and will not be added to a mailing list unless you request that this be done.  We will not disclose it further without your consent or if required to do so for legal reasons.

Pseduonymous membership
If you do not wish us to know who you are, but still wish to be a member, you should use an pseudonymous email account as can be obtained through Hotmail or Yahoo. Do not provide your real name, or a login/password which can identify you.

Browsing
When you browse our site, we track all pages that are viewed. This information is available minimally through the web server logs. We also record it within the software system which powers this site. If you are logged in, we can associate your browsing with your membership details. Otherwise, you are treated as an anonymous browser. If you are concerned about identification, you should either not log in to the site, or you should use a pseudonymous membership to log in.

Searches
Search terms that you enter when using our search engine are collected. We use these search terms to ascertain what people are looking for at this site, and to improve the services that we provide.

Links to other sites
This site may contain links to other sites. We are not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of such web sites.

Cookies
A cookie is a short piece of data which is sent from a web server to a web browser on the user's machine when the browser visits the server's site. The cookie is stored on the user's computer, but it is not an executable program and cannot do anything to your computer.

Whenever a web browser requests a file from the same web server that sent the cookie, the browser sends a copy of that cookie back to the server along with the request. In this way, the server knows you have visited before and can co-ordinate your access to different pages on its web site. A server cannot find out a name or e-mail address, or anything about a user's computer, by using cookies.

This system uses cookies to obtain session details for access to parts of our site. Cookies are essential in providing a seamless access to our range of services. Cookie information is not futher stored or collected by us. If you choose not to accept cookies from this site, you will not be able to maintain a session-based interaction with the site and will be treated as an anonymous browser.

 If you have any questions about our privacy policy, please contact ALMA.